Even though I would love to have news every day for readers of Pilot Presence, I will sometimes bring up some posts/comments I see on other sites for further discussion. For instance:
On hizook, where Travis introed the iRobot AVA, in the comments Frank Tobe from The Robot Report includes his own account of meeting Colin at CES:
I was lucky enough to attend CES and met Colin Angle.
AVA is a telepresence robot built inexpensively from other products. An iPad is fastened on top – and since the new iPad 2’s will have two cameras – one front and back – the iPad could be used for two-view applications, the telepresence visual agent. Affixed below the iPad is a Kinect-like device for navigation, gesture recognition and additional sensor input – this device could be used for a variety of apps like hands-free communication with the iPad, following the actions of a nurse, etc. And driving the whole thing is iRobot’s core mobility device and nav system.When I asked Colin about whether it was iRobot’s version of a telepresence robot he said that it wasn’t anything just yet – rather, it was a mobile device, cheaply made from user-friendly components, waiting for users to provide the apps for it to do their bidding. Then I asked him whether it was a home health device and he smiled and said that once it matured into something, their health robotics unit would be the first to make use of it.
Full story at http://www.everything-robotic.com, the Everything-Robotic.com blog of The Robot Report.
Another fun one I found was at Tech Trackr on the Anybots QB hanging around CES 2011 with their “pimps”. See the video below from Tech Trackr:
BTW Tech Trackr – great production effort on the opening logo slide!
And, last but not least, vGo gets a hit in Sweden on the Feber site: Robotar – Vgo-telepresence-robot. Seems like one of the commentors did not like the interviewer very much.